Thursday, September 11, 2008

SLCC 08 Poster Session Followup

In Tampa while we were giving our presentation, a number of questions came up during our session that we didn't get a chance to address- there were many interested people asking questions at once, which was awesome! It made for a bit of a chaotic session, though, and I wanted to make sure that everyone's questions about our project were addressed.

-How did we approach administration with our project? As a group! :) Group support for such a new and unique technology has really helped us bind together to create a salient justification for exploration of Second Life. I have a Masters of Arts in Learning and Technology focusing on Avatars, Cognition and Community in Second Life, which makes my physical administration of the island a good fit (though I will say I am just a conduit to organize everyone's incredible efforts- Second Life takes a village more than any other technology I've worked with.)

-How do we overcome security issues? We take advantage of system affordances that allow us to secure the space technically, like group permissions levels and land controls that don't allow pushing for instance- but in the end, we approach the space with the open hearts and minds of pioneer explorers, and know that if things go awry, well. Time is expensive, but pixels can be regenerated, and humans usually learn more poignant lessons from mistakes- great teaching moments can arise from strife. We all also realize that we can guide the space, but we can't really control it.

- What about our build or train priorities? We believe it is most important to train as many people as we can to think of this space with their higher order hats on- and that there is already a TON of incredible content in Second Life to utilize for teaching and learning. We will be putting the vast majority of our project funds into preparing folks to use the environment, rather than building out an elaborate build on OR CC Isle. Now, that's not to say we don't want to have a nice island that people want to visit- but we recognize that the success of this project is found in the human efforts atop the pixels. "The sauce", so to speak.

Whew! I think that's all that got missed, but remember, if anyone has questions about our project, please contact us in world, or come to the island. We're meeting this term on Mondays at 2PM. We'll be taking a small break for the next two weeks to get Fall term up and running, so our next meeting is September 29th- come on by and join us!